


Thy Eternal Summer

by SteadyLittleSoldier



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Bisexuality, Domestic, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Kid Fic, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Parenthood, Reunion, Sequel, Slow Burn, can't wait for the sequel so i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-06 22:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15204383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteadyLittleSoldier/pseuds/SteadyLittleSoldier
Summary: It is by chance that he sees Oliver again years after that fateful summer. But the cruel reality has changed his Oliver who had to go through a storm alone and now has to bear the baggage of another human life. Elio, oscillating between incognizance and fear, fights a silent war with himself trying to find the old Oliver in him and struggles to bring back summer for both of them when another tragedy strikes.





	1. Chapter 1

August had come and gone. So had September. So had Oliver. The person upon whose arrival I had first counted the days and fast-forwarded to the day when I’d be getting my own bedroom back, waited for summer to end. Now there was nothing I would not give up to rewind time and bring back summer, bring back that scorching day when he had stepped out of the cab and handed me his backpack, but with the fierce longing and desire already instilled in me with surety, and the knowledge that these six weeks were all we would be given.  
I didn’t numb myself to the feelings, nor did I deny things. But there was no regret, I had held my moment. I was grateful that those six weeks were given to us at all.

Perhaps the most agonizing was the first two weeks after his departure. I kept looking up from my piano to find him there, looking at me with that steely gaze of his. Waking up each morning, and before opening my eyes, expect to hear the bed creak and feel his weight against me. Maybe it was the sun streaming in through the French windows that made my eyes water. Going downstairs for breakfast, lunch or dinner and dreading to find his seat empty - that dread never really left me, but now it attacked with a new, more powerful force that twisted my insides and left me panting. Dreading his  _ Later! _

Rather the lack of it now.

At times I didn’t know if it was the thought of Oliver or the few days left of Summer that saddened me. Nearing the end, everybody started to go back to their own lives. Marzia left a week after Oliver. We were one of the last families to leave the place. The villa went quiet and empty. The remaining ones would play tennis with no real vigor. At night I would refuse to go out and behold the dying town, so I spent them on the big rock by the sea. Just sitting, thinking - I tried not to live in the past, but - reminiscing. Taking a swim sometimes. The splashes would deceive my ears and I would hear his chortle. I would stop for a second, look around me, then smile. Remembering him was the least painful moment of those days. I longed to be alone and think about him. Just him. And that checklist.

 

I went back to school, and that year too came and went. Oliver had joined us for Christmas and New Year. We had gone back to our routine of steadfastly avoiding each other and showing indifference - as you do with the cousins that you see only in the summer and get too close to but are too embarrassed to be the first one to rekindle that intimacy, yet yearning to run and play with them and not waste any more time, but are kicking yourself as you feel time slipping away through your nimble fingers and you know if you let this summer slip away, you will never be able to reignite the flame because two summers are too much of a time - knowing all too well that it fooled no one, least of all Oliver. He had entered my room the last night before he was said to leave to tell me that he was engaged. He kissed me afterward. A rigid thing. I didn’t expect him to do more, but I wanted  _ one _ more kiss. I’d watched him get into the car and drive away, not before looking up at my window and locking eyes with me. His glance had meant so much, as though he had squeezed all of that summer, Rome, and this winter into that one glance and was conveying something too precious to me. But I was too tired. I’d refused to think that afternoon.

 

That summer Marzia and I picked up where we’d left off. I got into a college in the States and she into a French university. And so we promised to remain friends as we were before. I called Oliver to let him know where I was going to college. He congratulated me. “Call if you need anything.” I never did .

 

I spent most of my time working and in classes. I let people trail me to my apartment and spend the night. The open wound turned into a dull ache. Everyone carries some sort of baggages. It’s easier when you have someone to help you carry that. But the baggage that he left me with - no one wanted that baggage.

As the year wore on, it finally dawned on me one morning, half-asleep, that he wasn’t constantly on my mind anymore. A certain smell sometimes would remind me of him. A phrase, a smile on a stranger’s face that resembled his, or blue eyes. A blonde head from behind. Or the sheer curtains of my apartment swelling up from the autumn breeze.

It wasn’t until I went to back to B. that I realized how long it had been and how time may help you forget but it also makes you sentimental.

Here, unlike in the States, everything was infused with the very essence of Oliver. The pool, the rocks, the bike, the table, my bedroom, myself. The things that should have reminded me of my childhood, now reminded me of a summer that seemed like it had never happened, as though it was a daydream I had conjured up, a daydream so dulcet that to think it unreal made my whole life seem wasted. Yet to bring back the figure was too hard for I no longer had him. It felt as though I was floating between dream and reality, no longer knowing which was which and no longer bothering to differentiate because once again I refused to think. I liked to believe I’d decided to do so only because I was lazy and not because it hurt too much, because neither brought me joy or peace, although I was after neither. What  _ did _ I want? Nothing.

 

I wanted to call him.

 

I dialed his number. It rang but nobody picked up. When I asked my father, he told me Oliver hadn’t called since the last time I talked to him, which was the January. My father had tried to call him but it was a futile endeavor. “Ah… I haven’t given much thought to it. Should we be worried?” he said.

My mother and I thought for a moment. “He is probably not the kind to keep in touch with  _ every one  _ of his acquaintances.” said my mother before returning to her book.

My father shook his head, meaning, ‘I don’t quite agree’, but he let it go.

 

Now, as I was bombarded with the sense of his presence - rather the absence - more than ever he felt like a ghost. Worse, like a dream. As though he never existed except for in the memory of a strange dream that you can guide because you are only half asleep. His memories, that had once seemed like a blessing from the universe, now turned on me and crushed me, paying me no mind, as we mar ants without noticing that they’re there. What is it to the universe if you suffer? The universe is indifferent to whatever happens to you. Funny, how we think we are the center of it. And forget how insignificant it all is.

I wished the thought would dull the pangs of pain, but it did nothing to console my reopened wound. I still felt empty.

 

It was, in the end, Vimini who came to some help.

“He doesn’t write much you know,” she said.

“No?”

“No. I write to him every day. But he sends one letter a month. But that’s okay. He is busy I suppose. He’s a professor.”

“What does he say?” 

She thought for a while, staring at the waves. “Things.”

‘How is he?’ I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. If there was anything important or unusual, Vimini would have told me herself. Or so I assumed. I found myself wondering if he was just as distant with her as he was with me after that summer. I never did understand their friendship.

She gave me the address, it was not the same address that I had taken down from his old application which I had dug out from my father’s drawer. 

I knew once I went back to the States, to my other, parallel life, away from these ghost spots and memories and daydream, I would no longer yearn to hear his voice, yet I found myself circling the address on my notepad with my forefinger after lunch when the whole house was asleep and there was nothing to do, or at night when I was a little intoxicated with vintage wine. 

But the thing that I was grateful for when I flew back was that my days did not seem to revolve around him; I went back to the way I was. I met Michelle during the first week of my return. The first night we spent together, I found myself sitting on my desk after, contemplating my next lines after the  _ hey-how-are-you,  _ while Michelle slept on my bed. How do you write to the light of your eyes, light of your life, light of the world, Mithras, whom you haven’t talked to in years, so much of whose life you have missed out on, whom you have shared your life, your body, your everything with for mere weeks? Did I even know this, States Oliver? What if he was totally different from Italy Oliver? A different version of Oliver. I dreaded to even think of him as any different from the Oliver I knew. He must remain the exact same Oliver, because the thought that someone else, or worse, multiple someone-elses, getting to know this other Oliver, or different versions of Oliver, that I had missed out on, broke my heart.  _ Don’t let him be someone else when he’s away  _ \- a ghost whispered in my ear that night as I drifted off to sleep beside Michelle. A ghost from two summers ago. 

What I failed to understand then was that though I had hated to miss out on so much of his life, of his straits, his youth, his childhood, it did not, could never affect how easily I could love and know him thoroughly because he had become me in those glorious but numbered days of summer and no strait, no forked road in life could undo that, and there was no rush to catch up.

The next morning I woke up to soft kisses, and the previous night’s ghost slipped from my mind easily. We spent hours talking lazily in my bed, Michelle and I, until we realized we were both starving.

It was easy with Michelle.

 

It was the swelling of the sheer curtains that reminded me, weeks later, of the letter that I had written. I pressed it to my mouth. Thinking. Thinking.

I posted the letter before I met Michelle at the movie theatre. It was just a single sheet of paper. If my mother was right, I hoped he wouldn’t mind me contacting him when he didn’t even bother to let us know his new phone number or address.

 

Michelle was lovely. She didn’t seem to mind to have missed out on my childhood, she concentrated on the present and the future. Something that I should have done too. But there is no present without the past. Nor is there is any future without it.

We talked about literature and art, she educated me on cinema and I found myself meeting her parents. I liked her parents because they were kind, loving. What I loved more was their pianoforte. I played for them when asked and kept getting invited back without realizing where it all led, not knowing if it was my expertise with the piano or my European charm that impressed them. When my parents came to visit me in the States, they invite them as well. I had never seen Michelle so happy. I supposed it must have been a relief to find that her parents not only approved of but genuinely liked me, and mine her. Yet I failed to understand why we always seek approval from the people we love, from the world, no matter how much we say we don’t care.

 

It reached me when I was starting to pack for my winter vacation. A single sheet of paper. Neat writing of a professor. He was fine he said. He didn’t say why he had moved. Maybe because I hadn’t asked. Even in his writing, he seemed rigid. So we were back to that? Right. Back to the winter of ‘83 and worse. A single sheet of paper.

I deserved nothing better.

I wondered if he had written to Vimini this month. Or was it this month’s letter and he only allowed himself to write one letter every month to every junction of his life and Vimini wasn’t getting one this month because I got one?  

He hadn’t asked me anything. He had just answered my questions and hoped I was well. Perhaps he asked Vimini in his letters and already knew where I was, what I was doing, how was life, how my parents were and all that. Perhaps he didn’t want to give me a scope to reply. You cannot reply to a reply unless you want to make it an endless loop and come across as a bother. But weren't we past that? Long, long past that? When and how had we gone back to the winter of ‘83? The first weeks of that summer? How do we come back from that?

 

When Michelle and I got back from our holiday, we didn’t see the point of keeping two apartments when we spent most of our days together. So Michelle moved in with me seeing mine was closer to college. I wasn’t exactly fond of living alone and her constant company made everything better. She obsessively tidied things up, not that I was unimaginably untidy on my own, but I didn’t mind. If doing so made her happy so be it. And in the process she found a blue shirt in a plastic bag. Billowy.

“Don’t you want to hang this?” she said. “It’s wrinkled.”

I panicked just for a second before I composed myself. I hadn’t let anyone touch Billowy. I was praying she didn’t open the bag and pull it out. “No.” said I, as nonchalantly as I could. I turned back to my work but not enough to not be able to throw side glances as though she had my hairy heart in her hands that had been ripped out of my chest and kept in a lone glass chamber for too long but had become no less precious to me because it was _ mine _ , and a stab, even a flick would cause unbearable pain, which also made me afraid if it should slip through her fingers and fall. “No, just throw it at the back of the closet. It’s old.”

“Shouldn’t you just throw it away then?” she said but neatly pushed it back in the closet anyway. “Are you a hoarder, my darling?” She came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my neck and, smiling, kissed my cheek.

“I was actually keeping it for someone. It’s not mine. But I don’t think I will be able to return it.” said I, not lying, talking about Billowy, also not.

A moment passed as Michelle furrowed her brows and thought. “What?”

“Lost connections,” said I, kissing her arm.

 

One evening I found the phone ringing in the empty apartment as I unlocked the door and got inside after a long day.

“Hello,” I said, with the phone in one hand and with the other loosening my shoelace. “Elio Perlman.”

“Oliver.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Shakespeare's sonnet 18.
> 
> Sorry if there's any mistake. This isn't edited.
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lines in single quotation marks are his internal dialogues.

Someone was calling me by name. It reminded me of a quote from the Bible. _ I have called you by name. You are mine. _

 

The  _ ‘Oliver’  _ that I just heard was not the same as the  _ ‘Elio Perlman’ _ I had said. He was calling  _ me _ Oliver.  _ He _ was calling me.

 

_ I have called you by name. You are mine. _

 

“Elio? Elio, can you hear me? It’s Oliver.”

“Yes, hi, I can hear you.”

“Yeah? How are you?”

“Fine. Fine.”

When it became evident that I was too dumbstruck to ask how he was in return, he tried to continue the conversation. “I tried before, you never picked up.”

“Probably wasn’t home. Sorry.”

“No, that’s fine. You get my letter?”

“Yeah.”

He breathed and I held mine. I needed to listen to this. “You never wrote back.”

I had nothing to say. “You can’t reply to a reply.” I heard a chuckle. “How’d you get my number?”

“Your parents.”

Of course. 

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“‘Course not, Oliver.” said I, realizing, only after it left my mouth, how much it hurt to say his name. _I have so much, yet nothing to say to you, Oliver,_ I wanted to say. _You know everything._ _But please, please don’t stop talking. Because a part of me dies when you do; a part of me that doesn’t exist without you, ceases to be. So you must not stop talking. I am willing to spend my entire life by the phone if that is all you are willing to give me because I need to keep that part of me alive, the part from which the whole of me sucks portions of elixir just to be alive._

 

We talked, yet I was no wiser about him than I was yesterday or three years ago, which was good in a way because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. 

Now that after so many days, so many months and years I had heard his voice and we were done talking, it struck me all over again how thirsty I was for that voice. It was as though the almost cured wound was opened and being savagely stabbed.

He gave me his number and said I could call whenever I wanted.

_ Traitor, _ I thought.  _ You said the same the last time. Is it your phrase? You say it and then you disappear? I wouldn’t be able to reach you if I wanted to. _

  
  


I had no intentions of calling him this time either. If he wanted to talk, he should call me. But he didn’t. And I let him drift away.

Many a time I found myself beside the phone, dialing the first few digits and then dismissing the thought. And letting him drift away was just as easy as falling into Michelle’s constant, assuring arms without giving it a second thought, easier than gulping down the clog in my throat that wouldn’t go away while I heard his voice from the other side.

What would we talk about anyway? Chit-chat. Chit-chat. 

Chit-chat was no better than zero connection, I told myself.

 

Michelle busied herself with the maid-of-honor duties when her cousin got engaged and warned me two months prior that I was to be her plus one. I didn’t mind weddings; music, white dresses, flowers and smiling faces were nice things. I had met her cousin a couple of times and was fond of her, so I was happy for her as well. I only prayed that they wouldn’t ask me to play for them and I voiced my concerns jokingly to my girlfriend, realizing only too late that Michelle would, without any doubt, tell her cousin, which made me feel awful. I wished I could brush it off like it didn’t matter to me with a _so what?_ attitude. Like Oliver had seemed to do at first. But I was not that. Neither was he.

We had decided that staying at Michelle’s parents’ house, as the wedding was to take place in J., was a better idea than staying at the hotel her cousin was putting her guests in. She left me alone there for most of the following day and came home a little tipsy on wine that night and wouldn’t stop kissing me. Caught up in the moment, engulfed in affection, I told her I loved her. I needed to say it; I wasn’t even sure if what I said was true or what  _ it  _ was supposed to be. I felt happy and I didn’t know what to do with it. She laughed it off. It wasn’t a big deal for people like us, we were above that, she said. 

 

A blonde head from behind that caught my attention stirred something in me, but I had long trained my mind to ignore, without giving it a thought, the part of my mind that searched for signs, so my attention went back to the couple taking vows. I was smiling without noticing I was until Michelle turned around from her seat at the front and threw me a smile, signaling me to fix my tie. 

At the reception, I caught sight of the blonde head again, and this time I paid attention. I would recognize that head even if it had turned grey, because I had followed its movement for six whole weeks with the keenness of a surgeon while performing a surgery, of an eagle, I had held it and kissed it, worshiped it, worshiped that tall form, touched every bit, every curve of it as though I were its sculptor, admiring my work with the utmost understanding of all the hours and work and dedication put into it that no one else could possibly understand even if they wanted to and felt total  _ jouissance _ . It was him. There was no way on earth I was mistaken.

I excused myself from the people Michelle had just introduced me to and walked the small distance to the owner of that head. I touched his shoulder from the back with my shaking hand and was met with ocean blue bottomless eyes. He stopped for a second, taken aback, the stretch of his lips from the polite smile, as he had been mingling, retraced as he took in my face from where I stood inches shorter, until it came back, the smile, now showing his teeth, his canines poking out ahead of others.

“Oh my god, Elio!” 

I envied him. I envied how normally he could react while I stood there, stonelike, because nothing about this was normal. I envied how easily he could hide still.

But nothing was unusual in this. It is not impossible for ex-lovers to run into each other from time to time, especially if you live in the same country. He had nothing to hide.

I smiled back. “You didn’t say you were in the state.”

“Yeah, I’m here for John’s wedding.” At which point he grabbed me by the shoulder and introduced me to his friends, the people he had been talking to. When asked, I told him I was here with my girlfriend. He did not give my desired reaction to this. It occurred to me much later that my desired reaction would have been for him to look, at the very least, sad, because I was not happy, and, without throwing rationality out of the window, all I wanted from all this was for him to suffer, or better yet, see me not happy and suffer because of it. Instead, his smile, a genuine smile, broadened as he said, “Well, you must introduce me.” He seemed happy to see me. Perhaps my face brought back or refreshed his memory of his perfect Italian summer. I was waiting for when it would lead him to remember the last ten days of that summer. And eventually Rome. 

We were still chatting when a toddler in a vest tugged at Oliver’s slacks whom I hadn’t noticed until Oliver looked down and scooped him up. “This is Syrus,” he said. “You wanna say hello, buddy?” he said to the toddler. Syrus rested his head on Oliver’s shoulder, shying away from clear view and produced a small hello, but not without a smile. 

I smiled back. “He is…”

“My son,” Oliver said before I could finish.

Still smiling, I nodded. We were away from the rest of his group. “You never said anything.”

“Yeah, well,” He looked at his feet, at his son, at everything but me, which I was thankful for because I suspected the steely gaze might return at any moment now. “It’s been a weird few years.” That smile didn’t fade. 

It was the smiles that got in the way, crept in between us and stole everything we had. 

All the struggle, the heartache, the longing and desire, the scorching heat and the gloomy days, the sheer curtains, all of them, to lead down to this, the smiles and a pair of tiny eyes staring at me.

 

I hugged Michelle for a long while when I found my way back to her and danced with her when she asked. She didn’t pay much mind to it when I introduce her to the professor who had spent a summer with us years ago. Never had I wanted to be back at N. more, to our apartment. 

The next day I asked Michelle if she would mind if I stayed in J. for another day.

“But what about your classes? And practise?” she asked.

“That’s not a big deal.”

 

After bidding Michelle goodbye, I took a long walk to the cafe the next morning, because, as much as I didn’t want to think, I knew if I didn’t calculate my moves, I would make a mistake, and in spite of my father’s constant advice about being young and making mistakes, I really didn’t want to be the one making a mess of things for, in the end, it would be me who would be hurting and I wasn’t sure my previous wounds had healed enough to prepare me for new ones. We were to meet for coffee, it was his idea. It was, as was usual with him, casual -  _ Let’s meet up for coffee, yeah?  _ He had assumed I would be staying here the next day and not return home. Or did he know that I could, would drop everything else for him, even now, even if all he offered was a glance, or a handshake, or, if the stars shone upon me, a brotherly hug, in return. He must have known. I was wrapped around his finger again even though he had given nothing to lure me in. 

I forced my mind to think that it was a casual reunion of two old lovers, who, because of time, had become mere acquaintances, or, at the very most, friends. Because that’s all it was in truth: a casual meetup of two friends. We would sit, have coffee, talk, about his life, about my life, my parents, and then we’d go our separate ways. He’d call my parents every few months perhaps, and if I happened to be there with them, we’d talk, about his university, about my college. Months would become years, and years, decades. We had nothing binding us, forcing us to communicate or keep the wire between us live, because when he left me at the station three summers ago, something had torn, and it had died. We could never go back to that, never pick up from where we left off.

 

“Where’s Syrus?” I asked, without erring on the name. Son of Apollo. I’d been repeating that name in my mind the whole night, wondering who had come up with it, him or his wife, was it his father’s name or her father’s, wondering how little I knew about his life beyond that summer.

“He’s sleeping in my friend’s room. Why, did you want to see him?”

_ No, Oliver, I’m not here to see your son. _ “No... that’s fine, let him sleep.” Then it hit me. “Your wife’s didn’t come?” The sentence, the thought, seemed foreign, to my mouth, to my mind, and it stung my tongue. Oliver, wife, son… who was the person sitting across from me? This morning’s preparation, months and years of preparing myself for this exact moment, rehearsing it in my mind, was not enough to prepare me for this new version of Oliver. He smiled and looked down. “It’s… ‘cause you said he’s with your friend…” I said.

“My wife passed away, Elio,” he said, his voice shielding every bit of emotion that might slip through his throat. 

For a moment neither of us had anything to say. This new piece of information, along with this new version of Oliver, struck the beehive in my brain which was jammed with emotions I could not grasp. The rational part of my mind forced me to scramble my way back to reality and utter something along the lines of ‘I’m sorry.’ I had to leave. Another minute of this and I might have bled again, or fainted, or might have been unable to stop the sob that was stuck in my throat. Or was I going to be sick?

He asked me if I was okay because, apparently, I looked a little pale. I nodded yes. But in actuality, I was unsettled by how composed he was. What I had totally missed in the haze of my own selfish reaction to what he had just told me, that didn’t dawn on me until much much later one night while I stood at the fire escape of my apartment with a cigarette between my fingers which I let keep burning and let the ash build to the verge of almost falling to the floor on its own because I was too deep in thought and had lost the sense of where I was or what I was doing, and was back at his hotel, a coffee table between us, that this was  _ Oliver _ .  _ ‘È un timido’ _ , my father had said once.  _ Timido _ and no-drama Oliver. 

I didn’t know much about babies, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask and therefore face this new Oliver, I could only assume his son’s age, and the toddler seemed at least a year old. It must have happened a year ago. Do you forget in a year? Does a year make it easy to utter the loved one’s name in the same sentence that has any form of the word ‘death’ in it? ‘Or are you hiding again, Oliver?’

Years ago on the Piave memorial, I had wondered if even a hundred years would be enough to forget what we had, what I had.

I wondered what it all meant to Oliver, if he wondered about the same things. All this seemed unfamiliar, foreign, it suffocated me and I had to leave, get away from this Oliver and his son and his dead wife. I left unceremoniously, promised I would call when I wasn’t even a bit sure I would be able to. We hadn’t even finished our coffee. That was probably the cruelest thing I could have done to him after what he had thought I was worthy of knowing. A part of his life that was unbeknownst to me, the life that in no way included me. And he was still letting me know.  _ ‘He was good.’ _

‘Four years, and you’re still the best person I know. How did I ever get to share my body with yours, my soul, myself?  _ You are so lucky.  _ I am, Oliver.’ I should have been satisfied with that. I had found you, Oliver. I had found myself. Even if it was for a few weeks, but what you’d given me, what we’d found, was something most people don’t even know about to look for. The ration that the sky gives us. The stars. Time seemed subordinate.  

But we tend to want to preserve things. It is basic human nature and I didn’t have the guts to even pretend to be above that. I wanted to preserve the stars.

 

I ran back to Michelle that afternoon, and not before I had entered our apartment did it felt like I was dropped back into my own body and not slipping in and out of dreams and parallel realities. Michelle, our apartment, college, work, practise - these were what my reality was made of, and I was happy. Going back is false.

But trying to erase the past is equally false. I wondered if Oliver had an answer. I hovered over the phone again. He must have been home by now. I could easily have called him, he wouldn’t have minded. He’d pick up. ‘What do I do, Oliver?’ I’d ask. I had no idea what this Oliver would say, and it scared me. The thought of not knowing the person I had merged my soul with scared me so much that the idea of letting him slip away again seemed alluring. I refused to face any of it.

  
  


“Oh I forgot to tell you, Elio,” said my mother over our weekly phone call session, “You’ll never guess who called.”

_ Oliver. _

“Oliver!”

“Yeah?”

“He said you two ran into each other. Why didn’t you tell us?!”

“It was just this weekend.”

“Well, I’m glad you two reconnected. You became such good friends.”

“Yeah.” 

“I suppose you know about his son and wife then?”

His son and wife. His son - young, a beginning, compared to whom I felt like the trees in autumn. His wife - dead, silent. Strange how my mother could say these two words in the same sentence.

No, I didn’t know anything about his son and wife except that one was born and the other had died. But that is not what my mother meant, and I spared her with a yes for both of our sakes.

While talking with her I discovered that, even though my parents lived thousands of miles away from us, they knew more about this new Oliver than what I had unraveled from our chit-chats, because I learned from my mother that Oliver was moving back to N.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”_  
>  -John Keats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was originally going to be 4 chapters but I have too much stuff to jam it all in one chapter. So there are going to be 5 chapters now.

I dialed his number carefully, taking my time, delaying the moment when I’d have to hear his voice and keep from letting out a sigh, a sigh of despair and defeat. I couldn’t back away, I’d made a pact with myself. Even Michelle thought I should call him when I told her about Oliver moving. “Since you are such good friends.” she’d said.

All my anxiety seeped out of my system through a relieved sigh when, instead of Oliver, a woman picked up, who I assumed was his mother, and told me that Oliver wasn't home yet and that she would tell him I’d called. But as the hours wore on and I kept anticipating his call, I found it impossible to keep still. Michelle had found something on the tv to let make white noise as she pored over her work. Debussy came to my rescue as I sat there watching her work with a book in my hand which I was not actually reading and found my toes tapping. I rushed to my piano and was approaching the end when I heard the phone ring. My fingers stopped on their own accord but my eyes stayed glued to the black and white of the keys. Like a jaguar hiding in the bushes, I stayed still, breathing hard through the nose, and listened to Michelle get up, walk towards the phone and pick it up.

I pulled myself to my feet when she yelled from the other room, “It’s for you.” I willed my hands not to shake as I took the phone from her. 

“Elio?” The first thing he said when he heard me breathe into the mouthpiece. I wanted him to be the first one to speak, to prove that he could tell, even from another state, that it was the sound of  _ my _ breath leaving my mouth.

“You’re moving to my city and I hear it from my mother?” I added a laugh which I hoped didn’t sound fake or rehearsed. This was okay. I had practiced this in my head for hours, the whole conversation. This was going to be friendly, and light, just the way he wanted it to be and tried to make it, and we’d both be safe.

He laughed too, thank god. “Yeah, well, I thought I should finally call the people who gave me the best summer of my life,” he said jokingly. My parents had given him the best summer of his life. I wanted to ask if that included me. “I hadn’t talked to them in years.”

It was you who tore all the connections, I wanted to remind him.

He had been offered to teach at C, and he thought Syrus was old enough to be with a nanny all day without the supervision of his bubbe. He couldn’t give up on an opportunity like this, he said.

It put me in my place. It wasn’t even remotely about me. The tiny ember that had flickered with a whisper that said ‘he is coming here for me’ was doused. I needed to be shown once again, with a finger in the eyes, that the world didn’t revolve around me.

I smiled. I was genuinely happy for him. And as we talked, about his job, about where he was going to stay, it became easier to talk to him. It didn’t make me feel sick. As long as you don’t talk about your son, or your wife, or your parents, I can pretend you’re still Italy Oliver. Let me have this. Even if you let this Oliver live only in our telephone conversations, dancing through the electric wires, to me and back to you, and back to me again; the Oliver who teaches Philosophy, who writes about pre-Socratic philosophers, who has only just heard of Celan this summer and doesn’t have to worry about anything but the place he is going to move into, no grown-up problems, no duties of a single father, no Oliver-son to take care of, no dead Oliver-wife to reminisce about. Let our voices keep that Oliver alive.

It made me realize how that the man who had made me feel childish just by his mature manners and voice, sounded much, much more grown-up now in comparison. I wondered what I sounded like to him and tried to listen to my voice as though I had flown out of my body and stood facing myself like in front of a mirror and started judging. It did nothing but made me unconsciously deepen my voice, which, when I finally realized what I was doing, boarded on ridiculous. So I had started to watch my step in his presence again.

 

It wasn’t until the last week of April that year that Oliver actually moved to the city. Instinctively I offered to help. “I’ve contacted movers,” he said. Then I would help him unpack. If he needed any help, I added.

When I knocked on his door that weekend, he opened it with a smile and with Syrus in his arms; his long strong arm carrying his weight effortlessly. I never knew how to be around children, so I awkwardly said hi to Oliver and eyed his son, who, not finding me very interesting, started babbling things as though questioning why his father had stopped before the door. I found myself repeating that question in my mind ‘who are you?’ until Oliver ushered me in.

“I hope this is not causing any inconvenience,” said Oliver, leading me further into the apartment.

Inconvenience? I didn’t know. I probably should have been practicing. “No, of course, not. I offered.” Probably should have asked Michelle if she needed me, if she had any plans beforehand, but I didn’t think she minded.

“The nanny I hired isn’t showing up ‘til the next month so we’ll have to keep an eye on this one as we work,” he said jerking his head towards the toddler. “He’s very gentle though, so don’t worry too much.”

_ I don’t want all this information, Oliver. Why are you telling me this? _

 

We started with his study. It was a two bedroom apartment, one of which he wanted to turn into his study. Putting on an air of nonchalance, I took the boxes filled with his books to put them up on the shelf as he organized his papers. This was what I had dreamed of once, not just domestic bliss, but also to touch his books. It was my mother who believed that if you want to know someone, you need not look any further than the books they’ve read. Oliver’s taste was all over the place it would seem; from academic books to novels, poetry, biographies, even detective stories. Holding these was like holding a piece of his soul, the only part I had access to now, and putting them on the shelf, as though to say, ‘stay here and remain exactly as you are, even if it’s the only part of you that’s not gonna change, let it be.’

When Oliver, more than once, excused himself saying he needed to feed Syrus, I forced myself to stay put and finish the work in hand instead of running to the kitchen - even if I told myself it was only curiosity that pulled me there - and watching him transform into someone that I couldn’t recognize. 

The full force of it didn’t hit me until he asked, while bouncing a whining and drowsy Syrus in his arms, with pleading eyes, if I could set up the crib in his bedroom. The image shocked me and left me rooted to the ground. We had missed out on so much. Oliver kept his son close. Even when he slept. I had been so busy trying to salvage Oliver from this new version of his that it took me this long to notice that he would not let Syrus out of his sight for one minute. He would not get frustrated or angry with him when the toddler repeatedly turned his face away from the offered spoonful of food, he would reply to his every whine and would laugh with him whenever the child laughed out of the blue. He had rushed to catch his son as, midplay, on the cushion and the blanket thrown on the floor in the same room as we were, he had started to doze off. That’s when I knew it was time to leave for the day. But he stopped me, offering me wine, and I was forced to see him tuck his son in on that tiny crib, pushing his blond hair back from his forehead softly and gently with a single finger and caressing his rosy cheeks with the back of that same finger, letting him get comfortable and checking if the absence of body heat wakes him up. 

A sip of the wine made us realize how hungry we both were. We ended up making sandwiches with canned ham because of the lack of fresh supplies in the new place.

 

Oliver didn’t have too many things. We didn’t have much left to do the next day, and when I arrived at his place, I found him toweling his son dry. I stood leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom, awestruck, as he dressed him and then pulled out a small, wide tooth comb and gently combed the few locks of blond hair that he had while murmuring things to him.

I found myself drifting to a point where I no longer could feel my own presence, I was there between the father and son, an omnipresent entity just watching them; there was no myself. ‘Who are you?’ I wanted to ask again. Not accusing, but wondering. And it wasn’t until it had already left my mouth that I realized that I had actually said it out loud. Oliver looked up at me which pulled me back from my trance. After a long pause, he smiled gently. He had lost none of his charm, his  _ muvi star _ smile. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

I was not going to back away from that and pretend it was a mistake, because it was not, and I was not seventeen anymore. I simply shrugged, meaning  _ it is whatever he wants it to be _ .

He gave me a glance before saying, “I have to take care of my son, Elio.” Then, almost as a second thought, as though correcting himself, he said, “I like to take care of my son.” He paused, without looking at me, still tending Syrus. “I don’t always get to do this. Only the weekends. This is the part of my life that  I look forward to the most now. He is all I’ve got.”

I stared at Syrus, who, unaware of the weight of his father’s words, took the comb from him and tried to reach Oliver’s hair. I envied him. It hurt a little. And this hurt pushed me to ask something that I couldn’t bring myself to ask all this time. “What happened, Oliver?”

“What happened?”

“To your wife.” I didn’t say the name, as though saying the name would make her more real than she already was, might pull her out of this imaginary place I had put her into where I knew she existed but I hadn’t quite taken in the full meaning of it, hadn’t put a face to this general idea of a wife, and therefore it couldn’t be real. Saying her name might make her too real. I knew he had married, he had a wife, but I could never imagine Oliver anything different from the Oliver who I’d clung onto as he came inside me, who had lunch with us and would make faces during dinner drudgery that only I would catch and decipher, who would gulp down thick apricot juice every morning, who only had six weeks of the summer to be Oliver, like butterflies. Oh, the irony. Oliver-wife no longer existed.

But she did exist, I corrected myself. Death does not erase you from memories, or history, and therefore, does nothing to lessen the ache, but further torments it.

He took a second, powdering his son, long enough to make me realize that his answer was going to be anything but straightforward. “I told you. She passed away.”

He knew that was not what I had meant. “How?” I decided to be straightforward instead because I felt a sudden urge to  _ know. _

“Car accident.” He didn’t hesitate for a second. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

 

I felt I had lost all my rights to be frank with him anymore. I was cruel and harsh when all he had offered were warmth and friendship. I wasn’t worthy of his friendship. And I failed to look at him the whole day, even as I said goodbye.


	4. Chapter 4

Late into the night, tired and high on anxiety, and reckless from thinking too much for too long, with Michelle already in bed, I called him. I was half hoping he wouldn’t pick up because it was well past midnight.

“Hello?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. I was awake.” He knew who it was.

“No that’s not why… When you start work?”

“Next week.”

“Right…”

“Did you forget something here?” he urged on when I didn’t say anything.

“Sorry...” I was whispering.

He waited a few seconds before saying, “For what?” with the tone that screamed that he knew exactly for what.

“I shouldn’t have… If you didn’t wanna talk, I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“I don’t enjoy talking about those things.”

Long silence, which exposed both of us.

“Is this why you went out of reach from everyone?”

His voice was calm still. “If I say yes, will you let this go?”

“Désolé...”

 

Pouting, and feeling pathetic about myself, I spent days without contacting him. If he thought the water was under the bridge, he should call, not I, though I fully understood that it was I who was at fault here. But I found my resolution wear off slowly as the weekend was nearing and he hadn’t rung once. It wasn’t as though it was something unusual for him to not call. But this new wall that was exposed between us made our clash seem even more destructive than it originally was, and his silence made me anxious. I wanted to know if the nanny had showed up, how he had been doing, if he had gone to the university to see his new office, if he had started working on the essay about Hegel that he had told me about, and if he had, I wanted to know if it was tough working with a toddler to look after, if he needed help.

 

“Do you have any plans for this weekend?” I said before he could say hello.

He didn’t answer immediately and I could imagine him frowning. “No, not really.”

“Michelle wants to invite you over for dinner. She wants to get to know you better.”

“That’s very kind of her.”

“So?”

“Yes, sure. Oh, I have to bring Syrus though ‘cause-”

“Of course.”

 

Michelle pretend-timidly opened her arms as an invitation for Syrus when Oliver  introduced her as “daddy’s friend”. And as he had done when he was introduced to me, Syrus tucked his head under Oliver’s chin. “Shy,” Oliver said, smiling. But soon enough, Syrus was giggling at Michelle’s every attempt to make him laugh, and ended up on her lap during dinner that we had made together.

Oliver recognized the taste immediately and looked up at me with his pleasantly surprised, knowing gaze.

“Mafalda keeps sending recipes,” said I

 

Oliver had quit smoking for Syrus’ sake but agreed to join me at the fire escape all the same. “She loves kids. She’s good with them too. Makes them feel comfortable somehow,” said I.

“What about you?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  _ You don’t want to know. _

“Was it really her idea?” Pause “Or yours?”

“Unlike me, she doesn’t pretend to be nice. She doesn’t scheme.”

He chuckled. “Out of all the lives I’ve imagined you in, this wasn’t one.”

“No?”

“No. Never thought you would be home-loving, and, and,” he looked through the glass at Michelle who was now playing with Syrus, “domestic.”

I shook my head, smiling, “Would you believe if I said I couldn’t imagine you like this either?”

“Like what?” he challenged, smiling as well.

_ Broken.  _ “Single dad.”

 

“I keep telling him to quit,” said Michelle when she got to know that Oliver didn’t smoke.

“I will. Give me a few more years,” I said, smiling and kissing her on the cheek.

“Oh, when youth is sucked out of you and there’s nothing left to recover?”

“You’re being paranoid.”

Smiling, Oliver broke our banter to take his leave.

  
  


That night my dreams came like a long lost friend and dragged me back to age fifteen. When I woke up, all that remained with me were a sense of touch, and though I was fully aware of what I had felt, a remembrance, which reminded me that a part of me was perhaps seventeen still, stuck in Italy like I had cemented the ghost of Oliver there. But seeing the sleeping form of Michelle sparked a pang of sorrow in me that I had never experienced before. I was no longer able to freely think, feel, or crave. I was not seventeen anymore, the thought of which all of a sudden made me feel much more older than I actually was. Was this what Oliver meant when he said it wasn’t just fun and games for him as it was for me? Was this why I was able to feel nothing but sheer happiness when I shared myself with both Marzia and Oliver?

I gently caressed Michelle’s hair as she stirred in her sleep. It was past two in the morning. Oliver must be asleep. And in that trance-like, half-asleep state when every half-baked notion seems rational, I felt an innate urge to be within touching distance of Oliver. So I did the next best thing.

I knew he wouldn’t pick up, and by the third ring I had lost hope, but wouldn’t totally let go yet. 

He picked up.

How about that?

 

“Hello?” came Oliver’s sleep-heavy voice.

I heard the whimper of the baby. 

I exhaled. Said nothing.

“Hello?” he said again, firmer and more confused this time.

I took a moment. “Did I wake the baby?” I said with still voice, almost in a whisper.

I heard Oliver sigh. “You did.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I thought you wouldn’t pick up.”

“Is everything okay?” He must have thought it was an emergency. If someone calls you this late, there’s a good chance there must have been. It hadn’t occurred to me. He had said his wife died in an accident. How it must have spooked him to have the phone ring in the dead of night.

“Everything is fine, Oliver.” Oliver sighs again, of relief or anger, I couldn’t tell. “Does he ever cry?”

“What?” I could imagine how disheveled he must have been, bouncing the toddle on his hip while fighting his own droopy eyes and handling an insomniac on the line, his sleep-boggled mind trying to catch up.

“You said he is gentle, and I’ve never seen him cry.”

“Of course, he cries. He’s gentle, yes, but crying is healthy.” 

The whimper continued as I blanked out on things to say because I so desperately wanted to say ‘Oliver, you came in my dream again.’

“Elio, are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes. I’m okay. Sorry for calling this late.” 

Apologizing again was my way of showing gratitude for not asking me that if I was okay then why had I called, because I could not have answered without confessing. And my mind was too drunk on the dream, on night, to lie to him.

He said he needed to put ‘this one’ to bed and bid goodbye.

 

It was the close proximity, I told myself later, that brought back the dreams. Now that he was back in my world, the ghost that I had made was fading and merging into this Oliver, which roused the touch memory. Even watching his muscles, limbs move was surreal, which made me ask myself in astonishment ‘I know what he feels like to touch?’ I knew, in fact, and this my subconscious knew better than my awakened mind. 

But we weren’t mentioning that. We would never mention that. This was an unspoken treatise between us.

#  ...

 

The news reached us at the time when all bad news are told to be delivered in fiction. Just before midnight. My mother’s upset voice, deepened with tears, floated through the phone as I grabbed onto the table to steady myself, letting out a shaky breath. 

Before hanging up, she reminded me to let Oliver know as though I hadn’t already been searching for the easiest way to tell him. But there was no easy way that wouldn’t hurt him or me.

 

Oliver and I hadn’t talked in weeks. I had called once, after he had started working, to know how it was going and if the nanny had showed up. Chit-chat. I had nothing more to say that would not reveal me, and I had lost the right to reveal myself.

I was sure he had nothing to say either as he had made clear that he would much rather spend all his spare time, which he didn’t get much, with his son. 

The night’s cool air was something I was thankful for, for it oddly brought comfort to my burning face. I walked the small distance to his apartment.

I’d remembered to tell Michelle before I’d grabbed my jacket and set off, who insisted on accompanying me realizing how vulnerable I was at that moment. But I knew Oliver. His carefree facade allowed him to hide, and hiding would take so much from him now. Her company might have benefitted me, but it would in no way benefit him.

 

“Did I wake you again?” I asked as he opened the door.

“No, no, I was just checking… what are you- is everything okay?” 

I had scared him again. But this time, Oliver, I’m sorry, it is not just my insomnia, not just a dream of touches and remembrance. 

The almost panicked look in his eyes stopped me from blurting it out, and the weight of the news, jabbed at my eyes and made them water as I stood there, unable to share. I knew how to hide hurt from people, but I did not know how to hide from Oliver. So I opened my mouth and stammered. “I… no- I, can I come in?”

Oliver ushered me in and took me to the living room sofa where he sat beside me. I was expecting a soothing pat on the shoulder, but he wasn’t going to touch me. He asked if it was an emergency. I shook my head.

“I’ll get you tea, you look cold.”

I didn’t stop him because I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t break down if I tried to open my mouth. Why was it hurting more now that I had to break the news compared to when I had heard it? I buried my face in my palms.

 

“Oliver?” I found him making tea in the kitchen minutes later.

“Yeah?”

When I didn’t make another sound, he left the tea and looked up at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Oliver, it’s… Vimini is dead.”

 

He stood and simply stared at me for a while, then I saw the peak of his nose gain color as his eyes glazed. He turned back to the tea and started adding sugar, then milk.

“Oliver?”

No answer.

“Oliver, are you okay?”

“Fine.”

I called him by name again, and this time I touched his arm to stop him. He did stop, but he wouldn’t look up at him. What he did instead, a moment later, was pull me into a tight hug. I heard him breathe heavily against my shoulder several times before he let me go. I wanted to pull him back, spread soothing fingers over his back and say ‘it’s okay’. Except I couldn’t pull him back or say it was okay because he was not and the silent treatise said we weren’t to touch.

This time, not even Vimini could bring us close.

 

By the time I was ready to leave, it was past one in the morning, and I was offered the spare bedroom where there was no bed frame, and only a mattress lay on the floor which reminded me so much of our attic in B. where he had gulped down my very essence in order to take it away with him, to keep me within him forever.

We both knew it wouldn’t have taken me any more than twenty minutes to go back to my apartment. Maybe I needed someone who was not as grief-stricken as I was at this moment, to find comfort in their arms as I would seek my mother’s warmth after waking up from a bad dream. I missed Michelle. He didn’t want me to go, and I was scared of leaving him. I didn’t want to leave him alone. We were both shaken and vulnerable.

I had never seen him like this and it left me disoriented. How many seasons do you have Oliver? Is one lifetime enough to discover them all? Our summer together, our winter, our phone calls and play-domesticity - put them all together and you get mere months.

 

The next morning I arranged tickets. Vimini was to be buried in B. She loved spending summers there, and though she hadn’t said anything about it, her parents knew that was where she would have wanted to be buried. Of course she hadn’t said anything about it. Despite the heavy weight of her sickness, she was just a kid; children aren’t supposed to think of where they are going to be buried.

Oliver wanted to come along. “If that’s not inconvenient,” he added.

Of course, it wasn’t.

He would have to bring Syrus with him.    
I would let my parents know.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?  
> Thou art more lovely and more temperate:  
> Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,  
> And summer's lease hath all too short a date:  
> Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,  
> And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;  
> And every fair from fair sometime declines,  
> By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;  
> But thy eternal summer shall not fade  
> Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;  
> Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,  
> When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;  
> So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,  
> So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.  
>  
> 
> \- Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,  
> What can I do to kill it and be free  
> In my old liberty?
> 
> \- _'What Can I Do To Drive Away',_ John Keats

It does not dull the pain of lose in the least, knowing that you are going to lose someone, the person that you have almost lost so many times and thanked the gods after as they had barely made it, or preparing yourself for the day that you know will come before its proper time. I watched Vimin’s parents weep, and as they lowered her, I allowed moisture to gather in my eyes. Losing a child is the worst kind of pain humans know - I knew I could not feel even the graze of it then.

 

Oliver couldn’t be found before dinner, just as he would sometimes disappear, unannounced, during our summer together. Syrus was with my mother, who had bonded very quickly within the first few hours of our arrival the day before - my mother relishing in the innocent glee that Syrus had in store in this time of grief, and Oliver was aware that his son was in the safest of hands.

I asked Mafalda to put something in the fridge for him and, walking down the narrow staircase, went to the rocks along the shore once the whole house was asleep.

He was there, like a vision from four summers ago, on his favorite spot, hugging his knees. I stumped towards him so as not to surprise him. Upon seeing me approach, he rearranged himself and sat cross-legged as though inviting, making room, opening up, in gesture, for me. I sat facing him, not the sea, not the sky, not the ripples. For a long while, we sat in silence. The tides were calm at this time of the year, and we listened, feeling small and grand.

He closed his eyes and a tender smile danced over his lips. I wondered what this place meant to him now. _ I’ve been happy in B.,  _ he had said one night while sitting here with me, said, while looking at the horizon where the sky and the sea met, he thought of me. He used to take Vimini here almost every morning, hand in hand, and talk until it was time for breakfast. Their friendship had baffled me; now it couldn’t be clearer. I wondered if he was now flooded with all those memories, or if he was thinking of me again, but in a new light, wondered if he was wondering if I had been coming here to resurrect his memories when he was gone and I was alone here.

“When Claire, my wife died… I wasn’t there,” he answered the question that was asked months ago. “They said she kept saying ‘my baby’ before she lost consciousness. By the time I reached the hospital, she had already passed away. Syrus was only six months old. He used to cry all night. I couldn’t stop him. Nothing could stop him. I didn’t know the first thing about parenting. So I went back to my parent’s place and put him in my mother’s care. Until one day it hit me that this child, this human being’s weight was on me, who he becomes is my responsibility. And I remembered the day he was born - God, I was so happy - and I had held him in my arms, his tiny body, and Elio,” he looked at me. “Elio, I was reminded of you. I wanted him to be good. And you’re the best person I know.” He breathed. “All my dreams and my life got tangled with Syrus’. He has become a part of me. And I realized, with my own selfish remorse, I was giving up on him. I watched him sleep that night, my motherless child, and couldn’t remember how I could have neglected him. I had never lost anyone so close to me before. And today was like losing her again, as though you lose all the departed loved ones again when someone dies, because you are reminded of the pain, of their absence, of all the things they will miss out on. It scares me. She was a child, just a child. So smart and  _ beautiful _ . And good. Just like you. Just what I hope Syrus to become.”

I did not say anything. Nestled in the arms of night, perhaps that was all I could do. I placed my palm over his and rubbed my thumb over his soft skin soothingly as we listened to the ripples making music against the rocks softly, and, raising his chin, he closed his eyes again, giving in to the breeze, becoming one with nature, looking younger but at the same time as ancient and profound as a god.

Moments later he moved ever so slowly and pulled me to him. My body slackened and I rested my head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around me and I wrapped mine around him. Touch memory, I thought, the feeling of the touch that came in my dream that night, it was now coming back to me as I listened to his heart beat.

“Don’t ever die, Elio,” he said softly. “And if you must die, wait till I’m gone. Because I don’t think I’ll survive if one day someone calls to let me know that you’re dead. And you leave something, someone behind, a part of you, your work. Because what you are, the world, the generations to come, they must not miss out on it.”

“If we have to die, let’s die together? Because I don’t know if my body will stay on an Earth where you no longer exist.”

 

That night I walked into his room through the French windows, which was open, and said what I had failed to say on the night of what now seemed lifetimes ago. 

“Oliver, I can’t sleep.”

He was awake, and simply lifted the sheet that was bunched up around his waist. I crawled into bed beside him and rested my head on his shoulder. He kissed my hair. And that night I slept like I hadn’t slept in years and years, my last vision being Syrus’s tiny chest rising and falling in blissed out slumber on the other side of the bed.

Home, I thought, despite all the dejection, I was home.

 

…

 

I woke up to soft hands putting all their tiny strength to shove my hand off of Oliver’s tummy where it was resting. I took my hand away and smiled wryly at Syrus as he lied on his father’s torso, staring back at me, making his claim. Disturbed in his slumber, Oliver twisted, and turned onto his side in sleep, but not without keeping a hand on his son’s back. Blocked from view, the toddler clambered over Oliver, resting on his knees now, to see me drown behind his father’s broad shoulders. I rested on my back and smiled at him, and when he kept looking at me as though staring at a playmate hopefully to initiate the play, with my pointer finger, I booped on his nose, making the noise under my breath, which made him giggle, which then made him unstable on his knees and fall back on the other side of the bed; Oliver’s torso a wall to play peekaboo behind. Resting on my elbow, this time I rose to see him, which thrilled the toddler and I was met with excited, waiting eyes. I booped on his nose again, and, grabbing his feet in his hands, he rolled around, breaking into a fit of giggles. Oliver grunted in his sleep, which made me realize that if this continued, he would be awakened in a moment, and the toddler was way too energetic to go back to sleep any time soon.

  
  


The sun had just started to peek through the gaps of the shutters and abandon a bluish hue when I looked up from my piano to find Oliver standing, leaning against the doorframe, mirroring an Oliver of four summers past, his now shorter blonde strands in a mess, sticking out beautifully in every direction. A supple smile played over his sleep tender lips which conveyed total bliss and sheer happiness. Adonis himself, I thought.

“Dada,” Syrus called out with his nasal voice from my lap when I stopped playing the piano for him in favor of looking up at his father.

I futilely endeavored to hide the smile and went back to playing as Syrus continued to thump his dimpled hands on the keys every now and then.

 

That day Oliver wanted to take Syrus to the beach after lunch. I joined them. So did Marzia and some of our other friends. But I was in a totally different universe, in a world of my own, as I watched the overjoyed child who had seen the sea for the first time and his careful father, running after him, joined in his delight. It bought a smile on my face, which took me a while to notice. I walked up to them and scooped Syrus up in my arms, and glancing at Oliver, my eyes awaiting permission, walked into the water. As soon as his feet touched water, Syrus doubled over laughing, and I couldn’t help but laugh myself at this unabashed display of glee. I looked back at Oliver and beckoned for him to join us. And watching his father swim around us only added fuel to Syrus’ delight as I placed a kiss on his plump cheek.

With Marzia’s polaroid, I took a picture of them; sun-kissed, both of them, Oliver trying to get Syrus’ attention to the camera while the toddler refused to do so and was pointing excitedly at the ocean instead, Oliver giving up after a while and smiling at his son. It would be a crime not to at least try to capture this much joy, I thought. I had never seen such beauty at twilight. 

 

Syrus did not protest by the time he could tell that we were heading home, only to start whining before we sat down for dinner. Oliver assumed he would be too drowsy by an hour to even protest. But he was wrong, and he had to take him back to the beach at night after making him promise not to cry about getting in the water. 

I loved the sea at night. So I took the chance and went with them. And upon seeing the ripples in the silver light of the moon, I couldn’t resist, and taking off my shirt and sweater, walked into the water.

I saw Oliver, holding Syrus very carefully with one hand, protective of his head, walk towards his favorite rock and sit there. And from there they watched me swim. Occasionally I would hear Syrus laugh and would know that Oliver was murmuring in his ear, which made me smile. I waved at the toddler when I swam a little too far and he waved back enthusiastically. 

 

I swam back to them and crossed my arms over the edge of the rock to rest my chin there and look up at them.

“And this, my little buddy, is a siren” said Oliver, pointing at me, talking to Syrus. 

I chuckled. “I’m afraid I don’t have any song for you.”

“With that face, you don’t need a song.” That wry smile had returned. “I wish I could jump into the water too.”

“I’ll hold Syrus if you want to.”

He smiled mildly. “Later, maybe.”

 

I got up from the water and dabbed myself somewhat dry with my shirt and put the sweater on, and when I found Syrus trying to grab my wet hair, I scoop the bit of water that caught the moonlight and glistened silver with it, and, holding his small palm open with one hand, let the water drip down onto his open palm. “Here, liquid light.”

Oliver smiled and, taking Syrus’ hand, closed it around the water, which helplessly seeped out of his hand. “Will you be around as he grows up?”

I looked up at him, smile still plastered on my face. “I’d follow you to the ends of the world, Oliver. If you asked. You know that.”

“Do you know why I moved back to the city?”

I shrugged. “I kind of figured.”

“Of course, you did,” he said, chuckling. “I wanted Syrus to grow up in the city, and not with my parents. I want him to be like you when he grows up. I want to be the father to him that your father is to you. I don’t want him to be like me. Because I’m afraid.”

“Your looks and my old brains, wouldn’t that be a bit too much for the world?” I joked to make light of this high praise that I found hard to digest. But what I wanted to say instead was, ‘Oliver, I would do anything, absolutely anything, to make another human like you, exactly like you. Because cruel time will ravish you too. And I would do anything to stop your beauty, your soul, the ocean in your eyes, this thing we share, from perishing.  _ And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence / Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.’  _ Shakespeare. Fair Youth. My fair youth. He was the younger soul, he gave me my youth.

He must have guessed, as he could always read me, for he smiled at me and there was sorrow, the kind that comes along fondness and the weight of the transience of human life; Vimini’s ghost hovering over us.

 

I can’t remember if it was I or he who leaned in first, but there he was, as natural as the ripples against the rocks, placing soft pecks on my mouth. 

 

When we walked along the beach on our way to the villa, I said mid-conversation, “Wait, you wanted to swim.” We were holding hands while Syrus dozed in my arms.

“We’ll swim at night together someday.” 

They were leaving for the States the next day.

 

Oliver placed Syrus on the joined beds and placed pillows around him so he wouldn’t roll off the bed, as though in our silence we had confessed everything. It wasn’t time yet to be separated. I took his hand and led him to my room through the French windows, closing it behind. Leaning against the window sill I lit a cigarette. When I offered it to him after my first drag, he smiled. “My first smoke in 18 months.”

“And only,” said I, determinedly, because he mustn’t smoke, but tonight is an exception. This whole visit is. Every sense of our body was awake and reveled in blissful memories.

“Kiss me again?”

“This is what I’ve prayed for since I left you at that station.” This, now, meant so much than what it would have meant four years ago. This, coming from the Oliver who had a child whom he said to be his whole world, the Oliver who had lost his wife, the Oliver who was more Oliver now than he was back then, this meant the world, the skies, the sea. This was all I would ever need to hear, this was what I was living for, I had got everything that I needed in my life, there was nothing more to want, nothing more to give. “You were so young, Elio, so young.”

He cupped my face and brought his lips to mine, and as soon as he did so, I was sure that this kiss, this moment, would forever be imprinted on this windowsill, the night bearing witness, like our kiss in Rome on via Santa Maria dell’Anima, because the taste that was purely Oliver, I came to realize, was something I had never forgotten, would never forget, and had only tucked away because it was making me compare and caused anguish. And as soon as I realized this, all the versions of Oliver that I had made up, the summer Oliver, the red, green, blue and yellow Oliver, the father Oliver, the husband, the child Oliver, the ghost Oliver stuck here in this very villa, they all crumbled and merged into this naked Oliver who lay now in my arms. I saw the summer in him, the frigid winter, the city, the father, the widower, the lover - they never died.

I closed my eyes when he pushed into my body and he was everywhere, murmuring one word as though it were a prayer, or a chant to revive the dead, to revive me, because I was dying, because in a way I was. My name. He was calling me. And I repeated after him because I wanted to put his word in my mouth, because I had lost all senses of language and wanted to call him and could only repeat one word and that was enough, that was all we needed. And this constant despair that I felt at failing to make someone, anyone understand, it vanished, because all I needed was one word, and we were whole.

 

...

 

“I forgot to cut my nails.”

Oliver, lying on his tummy, hissed as I traced the scratches on his back. 

“You hope they scar, don’t you?” he said wryly.

I nodded.

“Still sick and twisted.”

“Let’s go to the beach again tomorrow? Before you leave? I love seeing you at the beach. You belong there.”

He caressed my face for a while as though memorizing it with his touch and then kissed me ever so gently on the mouth.

 

Few hours before they had to leave for the airport, we went to the beach as promised. Syrus was overjoyed as the sweet rays of the late morning sun kissed his skin. Oliver even allowed him to play with the sand seeing it was going to be his last time on this beach. 

I patted my pocket. I was carrying the picture I took of the two of them. I hadn’t shown it to Oliver, perhaps because I was afraid he would want it. I couldn’t let him have it, because once we went back to our parallel lives, this picture was all I was going to have to remember all this by. Because memories are all I have, and all we ever do is collect them.

 

As the sun reached its peak, Oliver would leave to go back to his life and I would have to say goodbye again. A few days later, I would go back to mine. And I wasn’t sure I would feel this joy, this free when I would be stung with the sharp barbs of reality. I didn’t know if Oliver would either. I didn’t know if these new memories would change anything, hoped it might change everything. Because Oliver and I were hemispheres and the laws of nature say the world is round.

He kissed me goodbye in our bedroom. We said nothing about our lives in the States, but we were much aware of the promises we had made to each other under the silver light of the moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oliver calling Syrus his "little buddy" - I totally stole that from Armie. And the picture that Elio takes of them, that exists on Instagram.  
> This is it! This actually came to me just before my finals, so I used this to escape all the tension. And I can't tell you how much I loved exploring this version of Elio and Oliver.  
> Thank you so so much for reading, and sorry for all the typos and mistakes that I'm sure are there. I cherish each and every kudos and comment. Thank you <3


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